http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Social-Networking A listing of the most recently indexed works about Social Networking in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Social-Networking http://tc.eserver.org/35817.html http://tc.eserver.org/35817.html The speed of your data connection has not changed (although it is getting faster because of an independent effort by cable companies, telcos, and the like). What has changed is the flow of data from machine to machine on the Web and the processing that happens as information makes its way to users. Companies are making use of data that takes seconds to be published to the Web, as opposed to hours or minutes. http://tc.eserver.org/35818.html http://tc.eserver.org/35818.html This deconstruction of content is not limited to Twitter. The movement to expose underlying data and make it more actionable is gaining momentum across industries and platforms. One example is the move to report financial data in XBRL format (eXtensible Business Reporting Language). Another is the growing use of microformats and RDFa, which are small patterns of HTML that represent data on commonly published subjects on Web pages, such as people, events, blog topics, reviews, and tags. Twitter's character limit and accessibility, however, are the simplest and most recognized example of how elements of connected data can provide value both individually and in aggregate. http://tc.eserver.org/35821.html http://tc.eserver.org/35821.html While Internet startups have had considerable success with crowdsourcing over the last few years, including with its more serious cousin peer production, it's only recently that they've focused on creating the tools and communities that can be readily consumed by enterprises. http://tc.eserver.org/35822.html http://tc.eserver.org/35822.html The term "user" has also been critiqued because it obscures the fact that people use software and web sites in different ways. Sometimes the "user" is a customer, sometimes a contributor, sometimes an employee, sometimes a learner. In many cases, one of these words would be more accurate than the catch-all "user." http://tc.eserver.org/35823.html http://tc.eserver.org/35823.html Are you scratching your head trying to come up with current trends on a particular white paper topic? Why not tap into Twitter? By using applications that harness the power of this vast network, you can selectively search the Twittersphere for trends in your industry. http://tc.eserver.org/35826.html http://tc.eserver.org/35826.html Wikis are a great way to create and publish documentation online, but there are many wikis that haven’t worked. They comprise just a few pages of incomplete, out of date information. Why is that? Why do some wikis work and others just fail? Here are six key reasons. http://tc.eserver.org/35828.html http://tc.eserver.org/35828.html Jakob Nielson and his research group, Nielsen Norman Group, have done it again – letting us know how users are actively perceiving and using social software for different business tasks. This research is important as the social web evolves so that we, as web content creators, know the best ways to present and offer different types of information, especially for corporate sites. http://tc.eserver.org/35799.html http://tc.eserver.org/35799.html User experience matters in social media are more complicated than in non-social software. For example, the conventional user-centric view starts with user needs and goals. In social media these are not necessarily rational and objective. They can be much more psychological, and social, for example. Furthermore, the interactions that users have are not just with the software application -- they are with other users (through the software). The UI is not an interface to discrete actions and transactions (such as your online banking site); it is a social interface, and through it users feel like they are interacting with friends and audiences. http://tc.eserver.org/35791.html http://tc.eserver.org/35791.html A group blog on social interaction design for social media by practitioners. http://tc.eserver.org/35792.html http://tc.eserver.org/35792.html Focuses on opportunities for network conversation analysis to elicit valuable information about the social context of brand mentions. The challenge for marketers lies in how to use this information in a way that preserves trust with customers. http://tc.eserver.org/35793.html http://tc.eserver.org/35793.html What is SxD? Design of social media. It involves all web design disciplines: User Interface, Interaction design, Experience design, and Information Architecture. Social media include networked applications that permit direct and indirect, private and public communication and interaction. Social media platforms may be computer-based or mobile, even game platforms. http://tc.eserver.org/35794.html http://tc.eserver.org/35794.html With the growth and development of information and communication technology, relationships, communities and cultures have been dramatically affected, especially as a result of the increasing accessibility and speed of communication platforms. However, as people incorporate these emerging technologies into their social interactions, there results a tendency to lose touch with social nuances, cultural values, and the characteristics of traditional society. In this study, it is argued that social activities are inherently embodied in a cultural context. Therefore, a field study of tea drinking, as a traditional social activity in Taiwan, is presented with the purpose of revealing the abundant cultural features of this activity. Because these features merge with and influence people's social lives, developing a deeper understanding of this relationship could serve to enrich computer-mediated communication or interaction designs in the future. In this study, multiple user experience research methods are applied in exploring Taiwan's tea drinking customs, and, based on the findings, an enhanced cultural model is proposed to show the cultural significance of this activity. In addition, several design implications for software related to social interaction and cultural inheritance are offered. It is concluded that the cultural characteristics of a society should be a key issue in developing interaction designs. http://tc.eserver.org/35760.html http://tc.eserver.org/35760.html Today, marketing students also need to know basic HTML, design software such as the Adobe Suite, how to run a Google adwords campaign, how to optimize a Web site for search engines, how to analyze Web analytics data, develop a keyword strategy, and manage e-mail marketing campaigns. A basic knowledge of how social media including sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Twitter can be used to leverage a marketing message isn't optional—it's a requirement. http://tc.eserver.org/35735.html http://tc.eserver.org/35735.html For professional communicators, social media is like a new, wild river born from the converging streams of public relations and marketing. A good social media campaign requires the traditional PR skills of telling engaging stories and building positive relationships with constituents, and a marketer’s knack for knowing and finding “the buyer.” http://tc.eserver.org/35736.html http://tc.eserver.org/35736.html The age-old public relations tool, once crafted as fodder for print journalists, is now being applied more to the online world. A recent study by the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) found that most releases now target consumers and customers directly, rather than through the filter of the news media. Enter the social media release (SMR). http://tc.eserver.org/35737.html http://tc.eserver.org/35737.html Don’t we all want to get the conversation going in a positive direction when it comes to representing the companies and clients we work for? And while there have, of course, always been incidents of deception in journalism and PR, somehow the advent of the Internet and social media has made this a much bigger issue. As PR representatives and journalists for individuals and companies learn more about the benefits of Twitter and other forms of social media, questions are arising about how—and how not—to present information. http://tc.eserver.org/35738.html http://tc.eserver.org/35738.html New opportunities have arisen from the advent of Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites. But professional communicators, in their effort to gain a better understanding of the medium, tend to make social media tools more complex than they really are. As a result, they miss out on the big breaks they need to achieve their goals. Below are tips to take the guesswork out of connecting social media with PR. Hopefully, these are steps you are already taking in your career. But if you are like me and need a friendly reminder, read on. http://tc.eserver.org/35739.html http://tc.eserver.org/35739.html Social media sites offer a range of new opportunities for communication, marketing and networking. But employees’ unfettered online engagement can be bad for business and potentially injurious to their employment and career prospects. Social media present a huge threat to organizations’ reputations, especially those that don’t inform and educate their staff about their online responsibilities. That’s why Web 2.0 education must become a priority for HR departments, who should collaborate with PR teams to brief employees about appropriate online engagement. The same Web 2.0 education must become part of new staff induction programs. http://tc.eserver.org/35740.html http://tc.eserver.org/35740.html As web workers, most of us are steeped in Web 2.0 throughout our working day (never mind that we can’t agree on what “Web 2.0″ means). Many of us have embraced online applications from Google, Yahoo, and elsewhere to do the bulk of our work, and we rely on a mishmash of social media sites to stay in touch with our peers and build our extended networks. But this connectivity comes at a cost: the internet is filled with bright, shiny distractions. http://tc.eserver.org/35727.html http://tc.eserver.org/35727.html How can you build the right following? The question is important because like it or not, as communicators, we’re expected to lead the way in our organizations’ use of social media. http://tc.eserver.org/35729.html http://tc.eserver.org/35729.html Many companies continue to discount the power and potential of social media. Others are just beginning to flirt with the idea of using this new form of communication, while still others are in the process of developing social media policies to establish what employees can and cannot do. Then, there are those companies that have started allowing their communication specialists to engage in social media on behalf of the organization. But how many are teaching non-communication staff how to use this new media? http://tc.eserver.org/35731.html http://tc.eserver.org/35731.html Identifying the right corporate spokesperson for traditional and new media strategies - including public relations, blogging, video marketing, etc. - is an important task. Whether they are speaking to Katie Couric, a New York Times reporter or a blogger, it is essential that they be well versed on the do's and don't's of effective communication. Whether its a formal, televised interview or an informal email thread that leads to a story in a blog, the spokesperson should represent the image and persona of the company at all times. http://tc.eserver.org/35698.html http://tc.eserver.org/35698.html You probably know by now that LinkedIn is a powerful networking tool for personal branding and executive job search. In case you don’t, get busy immediately building your branded profile, connecting with people, expressing your executive brand, and leveraging LinkedIn to full advantage. But don’t make these 20 mistakes. http://tc.eserver.org/35701.html http://tc.eserver.org/35701.html If you don’t have a professional blog or web site, you may think that you don’t need to worry about content strategy. Think again. Celine gave some great advice in her article “How to Develop a Content Strategy for Your Professional Blog,” but these days our blogs and web sites aren’t the only windows to our professional souls. If you use social media platforms for professional purposes, you should consider having a content strategy for the material you publish on them as well. http://tc.eserver.org/35647.html http://tc.eserver.org/35647.html Governments and large organizations, with legal and administrative concerns like taxation and security typically address the practical aspects of identity we experience on a daily basis—issuing IDs and credentials and deciding the mechanisms for their verification. This division of responsibilities for defining and executing the construct of personal identity is nearly as old as the mind/body schism at the heart of Western culture. http://tc.eserver.org/35670.html http://tc.eserver.org/35670.html Let’s say that you’re reading a news story about a particular area of geographic conflict and you decide to investigate further. Without an encyclopedia available, as fewer and fewer of us seem to have them on hand these days, you quickly check out your handy online references. To your surprise, the article on this disputed feature seems to be an amalgamation of strongly differing opinions and ideologies, to the point where the article has been locked down from further editing. Such is the nature of the brave new world of user-generated content, where a content publisher forges a careful alliance of sorts with a wide range of contributors across very diverse locales and cultures. Depending on the intended purpose of the provided content, the end result can take on a life of its own, as it becomes the focal point for a silent yet fervent battle over “fact” and “truth” from divergent viewpoints. http://tc.eserver.org/35688.html http://tc.eserver.org/35688.html The world is a village – a village with nearly seven billion inhabitants, to be exact. Through modern travel and electronic means of communication, we’ve come closer to our friends and colleagues all over the globe. There’s no serious reason keeping us from working for customers in other countries, cooperating with partners on other continents, sharing information with peers from all around, networking with all the people we have met along our path during our entire professional and social life, something, that has lately become more popular than ever. http://tc.eserver.org/35610.html http://tc.eserver.org/35610.html I’m growing tired of presentations that are little more than lectures, so I’m going to experiment with more user-led techniques like this. Unfortunately, available wi fi at chapter meetings or conferences with participants who have computers or mobile data devices is pretty rare. But if you do have the opportunity, definitely try incorporating Twitter, even if only for Q&A at the end of your presentation. http://tc.eserver.org/35584.html http://tc.eserver.org/35584.html Websites are social creatures. Or rather, their users are. In turn, the websites you visit are tempered by the users that interact with them. Your experience with a website, say facebook.com, is directly linked to the people with which you interact on that website. But this introduces an interesting challenge for a user experience designer: do you design for the intial experience or the resulting experience? http://tc.eserver.org/35549.html http://tc.eserver.org/35549.html Thanks to the hype generated by Business Week, The New York Times, Fortune, and Newsweek (among others), Web 2.0 has captured the imagination of consumers and businesses alike. But knowing how to leverage Web 2.0 concepts to fuel collaboration and innovation among employees, partners, and customers is another story. http://tc.eserver.org/35442.html http://tc.eserver.org/35442.html Who owns user-generated content (UGC) posted to social media sites? This is but one of the many vexing issues presented by the emerging law of social media, albeit one of great interest to users, corporate subscribers and social networking providers alike. After all, if possession is 9/10 of the law, then the natural, lay reaction to the question of who owns social media UGC is “the Web site, of course.” That’s not exactly correct, however. http://tc.eserver.org/35443.html http://tc.eserver.org/35443.html Who owns user generated content (UGC) posted to social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter,MySpace and the like? How has or will the law evolve to deal with the different, and sometimes unique, modes of personal interaction (with others and with information) made possible by social networking technologies? These are just a few of the legal issues presented by the emergence of social media, one of the fastest growing — and most addictive — forms of Internet-based communication in the relatively brief history of the medium. http://tc.eserver.org/35416.html http://tc.eserver.org/35416.html The microblogging service Twitter is in the process of being appropriated for conversational interaction and is starting to be used for collaboration, as well. In order to determine how well Twitter supports user-to- user exchanges, what people are using Twitter for, and what usage or design modifications would make it (more) usable as a tool for collaboration, this study analyzes a corpus of naturally-occurring public Twit- ter messages (tweets), focusing on the functions and uses of the @ sign and the coherence of exchanges. The findings reveal a surprising degree of conversa- tionality, facilitated especially by the use of @ as a marker of addressivity, and shed light on the limita- tions of Twitter's current design for collaborative use. http://tc.eserver.org/35417.html http://tc.eserver.org/35417.html I believe that phone conversations for customer support have been studied quite a bit -- looking for phrases that sound like triggers for anger, avoiding long pauses, and when one party overtakes a phone conversation, it's relatively easy to detect when that's happening. But with Twitter, you could have long pauses intentionally as asynchronous, IM-like conversations happen when someone gets up from their desk and returns after a business meeting, for example. Neither party is angry about that long pause, it's just an understood agreement in the Twitter medium that you may or may not be immediately responsive. How does that time factor change the 'agreement' for a support exchange? http://tc.eserver.org/35425.html http://tc.eserver.org/35425.html The other day I sat down to write something about Twitter. I struggled with my thoughts, threw some words down, and came up with a question: 'Why are you twittering?' The responses were significant. The most popular reasons I received: People and Information. http://tc.eserver.org/35426.html http://tc.eserver.org/35426.html Google is no longer the only hub for content discovery. The statusphere is introducing new channels that now serve as our attention dashboards and it's the collection of streams of consciousness from those we choose to follow. Collecta, Twitter Search, Facebook News Feeds, FriendFeed, etc., serve as the gateways to insight and enlightenment. http://tc.eserver.org/35379.html http://tc.eserver.org/35379.html The impending launch of Google Wave is something for every technical writer to watch. Because if they have been doing their job the same way from day one, then Google Wave's undertow is going to pull them down into the surf. However, if they are embracing online collaborations tools, instant messaging, and related technologies then they are going to think Google Wave is game changer for technical communications because it offers a new range of communications and collaborations options. http://tc.eserver.org/35380.html http://tc.eserver.org/35380.html Despite what some people say, rules still apply when it comes to social media. Policies provide structure—for you and for your colleagues/employees. http://tc.eserver.org/35351.html http://tc.eserver.org/35351.html Wouldn’t it be a little magical if, when you signed up for a new site, it said something like, “We notice you have a profile photo on Flickr and Twitter, would you like to use one of those or upload a new one?” Glenn Jones created a JavaScript library called Ident Engine that can help you do just that. http://tc.eserver.org/35323.html http://tc.eserver.org/35323.html Why is social media so important? Traditional media tells the same big story TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE. Social Media is about lots of little stories told IN SMALL GROUPS AT THE SAME TIME. http://tc.eserver.org/35306.html http://tc.eserver.org/35306.html Users like the simplicity of messages that pass into oblivion over time, but were frequently frustrated by unscannable writing, overly frequent postings, and their inability to locate companies on social networks. http://tc.eserver.org/35315.html http://tc.eserver.org/35315.html I'm starting to wonder how many other people feel like they are being Twittered to death? Not just from the hundreds of tools out there to Tweet, search Tweets, or receive them, rather just the constant overload of articles, how-to's, and incorporation of Twitter into just about every topic across the board. http://tc.eserver.org/35299.html http://tc.eserver.org/35299.html You still have to be willing to moderate comments when you are a blogger or a wiki administrator. And you have to be willing to work hard to build a community that uses the technology in a productive way. http://tc.eserver.org/35278.html http://tc.eserver.org/35278.html Links to 100 organizational policies about the appropriate (and acceptable) use of social media by their employees. http://tc.eserver.org/35235.html http://tc.eserver.org/35235.html Although social networking sites have become the commonplace over the past eight years since the introduction of Friendster in 2002, designers have not yet explored two important notions: 1) What kind of social experience do social networking sites foster?; and 2) Do social networking sites encourage community? http://tc.eserver.org/35248.html http://tc.eserver.org/35248.html This article describes how the author investigated the business case for the operation of online customer communities, and evaluated their impact. This was achieved through analysis of opinions from members in company-sponsored and member-initiated online customer communities. The research aimed to understand the relationship between customer and company in online communities, explore the motivations of customers to participate in online customer communities, and the benefits of these communities to companies. The main findings of the research revealed that online customer communities are beneficial to both company and customer. The evaluation concludes with a set of recommendations to companies on how online customer communities might be effectively created and managed. http://tc.eserver.org/35249.html http://tc.eserver.org/35249.html In this article, Neil Infield shares with us the way in which the BIPC has successfully used social media to reach its diverse audience of inventors, entrepreneurs and small business owner. http://tc.eserver.org/35260.html http://tc.eserver.org/35260.html Conflict within local communities is an under-researched theme in Community Informatics (CI). This article therefore aims to contribute to the development of CI as a field of study by analysing forms of internal conflict within Moseley Egroup – a CI initiative developed in Moseley, Birmingham (UK). Ultimately it is argued that conflict is an inherent part of local community and is important to CI for a number of reasons. Conflict impacts on the appropriation and social shaping of internet technology by local communities, and has broader implications on the extent to which CI regenerates localities and empowers citizens. In this sense conflict is identified as a productive force, shaping and reshaping both local community and internet projects mobilized in its name. Conflict also draws attention to the contested and mutable relationship that exists in CI between the online spaces that are created and the localities they are set up to serve. It is concluded that conflict and forms of social struggle within communities should form a central part of the developing CI research agenda. http://tc.eserver.org/35261.html http://tc.eserver.org/35261.html Co-creative relations among professional media producers and consumers indicate a profound shift in which our frameworks and categories of analysis (such as the traditional labour theory of value) that worked well in the context of an industrial media economy are perhaps less helpful than before. Can this phenomenon just be explained as the exploitative extraction of surplus value from the work of users, or is something else, potentially more profound and challenging, playing out here? Does consumer co-creation contribute to the precarious conditions of professional creative workers? This article draws from ethnographic research undertaken from 2000 to 2005 with Auran games (a game development company based in Brisbane, Australia) to engage with debates about the status of user co-creation as labour. The article argues that as a hybrid and emergent social network market these relationships introduce a form of creative destruction to labour relations in the context of the creative industries. http://tc.eserver.org/35262.html http://tc.eserver.org/35262.html This article will demonstrate how the notion of ‘phatic communion’ has become an increasingly significant part of digital media culture alongside the rise of online networking practices. Through a consideration of the new media objects of blogs, social networking profiles and microblogs, along with their associated practices, I will argue, that the social contexts of ‘individualization’ and ‘network sociality’, alongside the technological developments associated with pervasive communication and ‘connected presence’ has led to an online media culture increasingly dominated by phatic communications. That is, communications which have purely social (networking) and not informational or dialogic intents. I conclude with a discussion of the potential nihilistic consequences of such a culture. http://tc.eserver.org/35185.html http://tc.eserver.org/35185.html Consider a plan that identifies who in your company will address phone or other inquiries if something goes viral (read the article and you’ll see what I mean). http://tc.eserver.org/35127.html http://tc.eserver.org/35127.html The purpose of my blog is to provide tech writers with information about changes and how said changes may impact documentation. That is also the purpose of my Twitter feed. I gather up as much information as I can and pass it on. I've found some excellent feeds to follow related to the various topics of which tech writers need to be aware. http://tc.eserver.org/35114.html http://tc.eserver.org/35114.html A description of Andrea Lunsford's argument, from research with the Stanford Study of Writing, that technology isn't killing our ability to write. It's reviving it—and pushing our literacy in bold new directions. http://tc.eserver.org/35099.html http://tc.eserver.org/35099.html As we explore what social technologies can offer and the boundaries they can cross—boundaries that had confined the traditional Web—UX professionals must now take up a new design challenge. We must address the changing needs for social media and facilitate users’ taking better advantage of everything social media has to offer. http://tc.eserver.org/35103.html http://tc.eserver.org/35103.html We made a timeline message more punchy, credible, and viral through 5 rounds of redesign. http://tc.eserver.org/35104.html http://tc.eserver.org/35104.html Hosting a company's content and services on 3rd-party social networking sites involves both tactical risks (lower usability) and strategic risks (less user loyalty). http://tc.eserver.org/35093.html http://tc.eserver.org/35093.html While the design of democracy is a wonderful thing, democratic design is less positive. We’ve heard over and over that “everyone is a designer,” and that through a combination of user-generated content, ubiquity of access, and new tools, design has finally made its way out of an ivory tower and into the grasp of the masses. What, exactly, have the masses gotten their grubby paws into? Can one truly claim to be a designer when they upload a picture to Facebook or remix a video for YouTube? http://tc.eserver.org/35083.html http://tc.eserver.org/35083.html Technical communication is changing rapidly. If you’re not ready for that change, it’s going to really catch you off guard. Anne Gentle's book Conversation and Community is an excellent guide to rolling with those changes, and for staying ahead of them. This article takes a close look at the book. http://tc.eserver.org/35084.html http://tc.eserver.org/35084.html New media should be accessible to everyone, not just marketing, public relations and web professionals. Here, I aim to help all people navigate the new media landscape. http://tc.eserver.org/35027.html http://tc.eserver.org/35027.html This chapter explores the idea that a small group of people who have a sense of belonging in an online community may provide content much like a technical writer does. Regardless of their background, education, or training, more people are becoming providers of technical information on the web. http://tc.eserver.org/35015.html http://tc.eserver.org/35015.html There's a shift happening in the way in which documentation is produced. We’ve all seen the beginning of it: the growing volume of what’s called (among other things) user generated or crowdsourced documentation. That trend is growing. And while a number of people in our profession are still resistant to the idea, it’s only a matter of time before users are our main partners in creating documentation. http://tc.eserver.org/34980.html http://tc.eserver.org/34980.html Social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are transforming the job search process, enabling more and more people to connect with potential employers, promote their own skills, set up support groups and search for job leads and contacts. http://tc.eserver.org/34896.html http://tc.eserver.org/34896.html Community features are spreading from "Web 2.0" to "Enterprise 2.0." Research across 14 companies found that many are making productive use of social intranet features. http://tc.eserver.org/34818.html http://tc.eserver.org/34818.html Employers have legitimate business interests in monitoring workplace Internet use: to minimize legal exposure, to increase productivity, and to avoid proprietary information loss. Since employees arguably have no expectation of privacy in their work on employers' computers, there are few grounds for complaint if they are disciplined for straying from corporate policy on such use. In this heavily scrutinized work environment, it is no small wonder that employees crave a place to unwind and play “electronically” after hours. In unprecedented numbers, America's workers are visiting online social networking sites (OSNs) and posting tidbits that might not be considered job-appropriate by their employer. Here, many postulate they do have an expectation of and indeed a right to privacy, especially in arenas used to express personal freedoms and exercise individualism that has no bearing on their workplace. http://tc.eserver.org/34820.html http://tc.eserver.org/34820.html Employment recruiters often maintain that business-oriented social networking Web sites offer a fertile source of information concerning “passive” jobseekers. These individuals, according to placement specialists, are persons who are currently employed and not seeking a career change. Many human resources professionals maintain that passive jobseekers are especially desirable because they represent an untapped pool of potential candidates who are not already associated with placement agencies or other recruiting professionals. Also, many passive candidates are considered to be especially stable employees. Although special effort may be required to convince the passive jobseeker to seek employment elsewhere, this effort is worthwhile because of the quality of the individual and the ultimate payoff to the recruiter who successfully places the candidate . The managers of business-oriented social networking sites do not dispute the notion that their services are oriented toward passive jobseekers. Indeed, some of these sites, such as LinkedIn and Power Search, explicitly promote their networks as providing vast databases of passive candidates accessible to recruiters. However, the assumption that members of business-oriented social networking Web sites are passive jobseekers has never been validated. The purpose of this study is to examine the accuracy of this assumption. http://tc.eserver.org/34821.html http://tc.eserver.org/34821.html This article aims to report initial findings about networking in organizational settings in Australia through the use of enterprise social software. http://tc.eserver.org/34824.html http://tc.eserver.org/34824.html Increasingly, individuals across the world seek relations of cooperation and collaboration rather than that of command and control. This need has influenced the rate at which individuals have allowed the Internet to intricately weave itself into their everyday lives in just over a decade. For many people, human interaction has truly adopted a virtual dimension. Online communities now link to one another and form a complicated technical web of interactions. Social networking Web sites (SNWs) are online tools that have transformed the virtual encounters of the past that were technical and impersonal to today's virtual socialization that is truly nontechnical, social, and interpersonal. The purpose of this article is to report the findings of a study we conducted among university students. We developed a survey to identify the reasons for which individuals use SNWs. We believe that these findings contribute to understanding future workplace expectations and arrangements. http://tc.eserver.org/34707.html http://tc.eserver.org/34707.html Social networking and social media have been touted as giving us a never-before possible opportunity to connect with and influence and work with others. The board might be new, but the game is essentially the same. http://tc.eserver.org/34696.html http://tc.eserver.org/34696.html Beyond the obvious impact on the Social Web, Google Wave is also going to change aspects of every business that currently relies on communication and collaboration tools of any sort, including the ubiquitous but lowly email. http://tc.eserver.org/34668.html http://tc.eserver.org/34668.html Should CEOs tweet, poke and generally 'get social' online? It's a good question. One that Fortune 100 CEOs are apparently answering 'no' to. That's according to ÜBERCEO, which looked at how Fortune 100 CEOs are using social media. The result: they're not. http://tc.eserver.org/34647.html http://tc.eserver.org/34647.html There is a lot of excitement about efforts that are currently underway to explore what social technologies can offer—the boundaries they can cross that the traditional Web could not. Similar to users’ need to cope with the problems of adapting to the ever-changing face of social media, addressing the needs of social media in design requires additional effort and interest on the part of UX designers, to keep track of the capabilities and limitations of emerging technologies. http://tc.eserver.org/34649.html http://tc.eserver.org/34649.html I’m going to start with a short introduction to Twitter, mentioning particularly the aspects that I found useful when tweeting release notes. If you’re already a twitterologist, you may want to skip that bit. Then I’ll describe how we’ve used Twitter as a method of communicating the highlights of our release notes. http://tc.eserver.org/34584.html http://tc.eserver.org/34584.html An introduction to the Twitter micro-blogging web service, with quotes from people who use it for professional/business purposes. http://tc.eserver.org/34544.html http://tc.eserver.org/34544.html When you think of the crowd, you probably think about a specific mass of people who use the software and hardware that we document every day. The interesting thing about the crowd is that it doesn’t necessarily mean people outside of the enterprise in which you’re working. There are people in your enterprise who can do a lot to help you with the documentation, too. Developer, product managers, QA analysts. They all have knowledge that you can and should tap. http://tc.eserver.org/34540.html http://tc.eserver.org/34540.html Even on the Web, world dominance must be achieved one country at a time. While Facebook has long been the largest social network in the world, and should soon pass MySpace in the U.S., it is not the largest social network in every country. http://tc.eserver.org/34525.html http://tc.eserver.org/34525.html This article offers an example case of technical communicators integrating the social bookmarking site Delicious into existing work environments. Using activity theory to present conceptual foundations and concrete steps for integrating the functionalities of social media, the article builds on research within technical communication that argues for professional communicators to participate more fully in the design of communication systems and software. By examining the use of add-ons and tools created for Delicious, and the customized use of Rich Site Syndication (RSS) feeds that the site publishes, the author argues for addressing the context-sensitive needs of project teams by integrating the functionality of social media applications generally and repurposing their user-generated data. http://tc.eserver.org/34526.html http://tc.eserver.org/34526.html This article argues for a rhetoric of networked exchanges that focuses on the response. Working from Spinuzzi's call for a rhetoric of horizontal learning, it examines two kinds of online writing spaces in order to propose such a rhetoric. After surveying conflicting, academic attitudes regarding networked exchanges, the article proposes the response as a type of professional communication. A specific message board thread and a series of blog carnivals serve as examples of the rhetoric of response, a way that horizontal learning produces a specific type of networked writing identity. The article concludes with a call for response-based communication practices. http://tc.eserver.org/34527.html http://tc.eserver.org/34527.html Social tagging ranges among the ``killer applications'' of Web 2.0. An ever-growing international community uses Web sites such as the photo database Flickr and the bookmarking service Delicious. In addition, a number of other portals use tagging to compile user-specific metadata on information on any subject—whether it be travel destinations, personal contacts, films, or museum exhibits. Retrieving and storing information via tagging seems to meet users' needs for a number of purposes and in many contexts. Starting with a synopsis of the current literature on social tagging and then focusing on the results of two surveys—qualitative interviews and an online questionnaire—this article explores the potential and limitations of tagging as a tool for organizing shared and personal knowledge. http://tc.eserver.org/34528.html http://tc.eserver.org/34528.html This article examines the characteristics of collaborative work and overlapping activity systems in the popular online game World of Warcraft. Using genre theory and activity theory as frames to work out the genre ecology of gameplay, the article focuses on how players coordinate ad hoc grouping activity across and through genres. It articulates the related development of open systems in online gaming in a discussion of interface modifications (AddOns) and online information databases that players generate, drawing on De Certeau's formulation of strategies and tactics and Warner's discussion of publics and counterpublics. The article concludes by discussing implications of online gaming for an open-systems approach to information design in professional communication and for professional communication in general. http://tc.eserver.org/34482.html http://tc.eserver.org/34482.html I've been asked several times to give presentations on the basics of social media marketing, and have now refined my 15 minute introductory tour to the point where I think it's fairly good (and I'm really damn picky about my presentations). The following presentation (in visual and text form) should be helpful for anyone trying to convince their bosses, team or cohorts that investing in SMM is a worthwhile pursuit. http://tc.eserver.org/34454.html http://tc.eserver.org/34454.html I decided to take a deeper look at Web 2.0 and its followers to see if indeed a cult had formed. In the spirit of 2.0, I’m using Wikipedia content as my sole source for definitions of terms. And, in order to stay within the concentration limit and scientific method of the social networking community, I’ll only take a quick tweet-speed look at three cult characteristics as a sample: Mind Control, Love-Bombing and Coercive Persuasion and then come to a conclusion. http://tc.eserver.org/34419.html http://tc.eserver.org/34419.html So you have you’re social media strategy, now what? If you’re like most organizations then you can’t roll out a social media campaign in a day, or even in a few weeks. So how do you go about rolling out a social media strategy? My recommendation would be to proceed in phases. What I’m outlining below is a very high level approach to rolling a social media strategy. http://tc.eserver.org/34426.html http://tc.eserver.org/34426.html Coming after decades of increased capacity and expectations from the desktop at the network’s edge, the burgeoning acceptance of the cloud as a way of doing business raises a number of interesting and important questions for the broader public. What control do we have over our identities, security, and privacy? How will it change economic and business models? What are the implications for governance and cyber-security? http://tc.eserver.org/34415.html http://tc.eserver.org/34415.html Twitter.com is a web-based communications platform combining Instant Messaging and SMS that enables subscribers to its service to send short ‘status updates’ to other people. Beyond its hybrid platform, Twitter’s unique feature is its overarching question “What are you doing?”, which acts as a ‘guidance note’ on how users should phrase their postings. Although it is a ‘soft restriction’, meaning that other formats and styles are possible, this study investigates the extent to which users of Twitter are responding to the question. http://tc.eserver.org/34418.html http://tc.eserver.org/34418.html A discussion of social bookmarking; its use and trends. http://tc.eserver.org/34400.html http://tc.eserver.org/34400.html Is it better to have 500,000 followers on Twitter? Or is it better to have 100 followers who are engaged and targeted? Is it better to have a website with 5000 pages of content, or a website with 50 pages of well thought out, valuable material? I am not trying to dictate an answer by using value terms in my questions, despite the fact that I am very much of the opinion that less is more and quality trumps quantity, but recent events are arising which may be proving me wrong. http://tc.eserver.org/34404.html http://tc.eserver.org/34404.html Aviso para navegantes: las relaciones con los consumidores han cambiado por completo. Y si aún no se había percatado, puede que se deba porque ha sucedido en tan sólo unos meses! http://tc.eserver.org/34389.html http://tc.eserver.org/34389.html Social media is so powerful and diverse that just about the only thing that can get in the way of an organization making the most of it is the idea that social media cannot be exploited without a "strategy." That makes about as much sense as stopping you as you slide your key into the ignition and insisting you first develop a strategy that encompasses your automobile needs for tonight, tomorrow, and every day in the future. http://tc.eserver.org/34376.html http://tc.eserver.org/34376.html People are doing business differently today; the intranet of yesterday is not sustainable. Make your intranet work the way people work. http://tc.eserver.org/34377.html http://tc.eserver.org/34377.html This report documents the beliefs, perspectives, and practices of educational administrators which help or hinder effective use of Web 2.0 in K-12 education. The study collected data from nearly 1,200 school administrators on the role of Web 2.0 in American schools and was made possible by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. http://tc.eserver.org/34352.html http://tc.eserver.org/34352.html In his first column for Intercom, Rich Maggiani discusses the onset of social media as a significant new form of communication, and how the youngest generation is now setting the tone while Baby Boomers struggle to keep up. http://tc.eserver.org/34341.html http://tc.eserver.org/34341.html Here are some suggestions to make better use of LinkedIn so that your professional network works for you. http://tc.eserver.org/34298.html http://tc.eserver.org/34298.html Marketers are increasingly engaging with consumers on social media platforms and Twitter, in particular, has received, and continues to gain, attention. From shock tactics, to useful value propositions like @amazonmp3 content feed, brands are revealing themselves on Twitter. We are starting to hear of stories about top executives calling meetings about how they should "get on Twitter" and saying, "We need a social media profile." But should they? Do they? http://tc.eserver.org/34315.html http://tc.eserver.org/34315.html Twitter isn’t just a cute way for keeping in instant touch with friends on mobile phones anymore. It has ramped up quickly to be the search engine of choice for some with its human driven results. Applications galore allow you to find friends all over the world with similar interests and keep up with them in real time. Businesses can form instant direct relationships with their customer bases simply by signing up and using the service regularly, and according to the models Twitter is trying out, they will soon be able to advertise to the Twitter community as well. It has grown into a behemoth that is hard to get your hands around, which is why we’ve put this article together for you. We’ve compiled an alphabetized glossary here for you so that you can just scan down the list and find the term that you are looking for, as well as a list of popular Twitter applications and instructions for incorporating Twitter into your website and blogs. http://tc.eserver.org/34287.html http://tc.eserver.org/34287.html With a bad economy, more pressure at work and overwhelming competition, investing in yourself and your future is crucial. There are a lot of new trends and tricks that you can take advantage of now. Below are five easy and initial steps you can take to start building your brand today. These will help you control your online identity, protect your future, centralize your digital assets, safeguard your brand from threats and more. http://tc.eserver.org/34263.html http://tc.eserver.org/34263.html Twitter can be a great tool, and can help people get answers quickly. However, when you have a question and need an answer, you probably ought to consider your question, and determine what channel is best suited for the type of answer you need. That may or may not be Twitter. http://tc.eserver.org/34262.html http://tc.eserver.org/34262.html This talk gets to the heart of how people interact and exchange information in online communities: through social capital, or as Cory Doctorow calls it, Whuffie. The key to growing customers in online communities is through growing your social capital. You will learn the 5 lessons of raising Whuffie through online communities in this presentation. http://tc.eserver.org/34255.html http://tc.eserver.org/34255.html Twitteurs are in a hyperventilating snit over the ridicule being heaped on their plaything by, among others, the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd, Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and Doonesbury’s Garry Trudeau. I’m a longtime Twitteur, semi-evangelical and pretty well engaged with it on a daily basis. By this point it is as integrated in my being as lymph. But I think the ridicule is a delightful, even important development. http://tc.eserver.org/34232.html http://tc.eserver.org/34232.html The use of social media for business is certainly a hot topic. For today’s post, Comet Branding’s new partner, Sara Meaney shares her first Comet Branding Blog post with us and dives into the big question on many people’s minds - “How do I convince with my boss that social media is right for our company?” http://tc.eserver.org/34225.html http://tc.eserver.org/34225.html Twitter can be entertaining, and useful — and, really, who doesn’t like the illusion, from time to time, of lots of company? I have only lately begun to wonder whether I’d use Twitter if I were fully at liberty to do what I liked. http://tc.eserver.org/34219.html http://tc.eserver.org/34219.html In support of their Hyperdunk basketball shoe, Nike recently launched a viral video featuring basketball superstar Kobe Bryant recklessly leaping over a speeding Aston Martin. The video's low-end production quality makes the clip appear to be user-generated. As our analysis uncovered, this video was spread far and wide as the online viewing audience tried to figure out if one of the world's biggest sports stars would actually attempt such a stunt. Watch the clip below and read on to see just how effectively this campaign drove audience reach. http://tc.eserver.org/34202.html http://tc.eserver.org/34202.html For writer, photographer, and video producer David Chandler-Gick, Facebook is a practical tool. "On a recent cross-country excursion to work with Cathy Steffan of Parallel Media Productions, Facebook served as a central hub to keep me in contact with friends and colleagues," he writes. "Accessing Facebook kept me in touch with what was going on, last-minute changes, and more." http://tc.eserver.org/34167.html http://tc.eserver.org/34167.html There is plenty of hype about “Collaboration 2.0” at the moment, but the bugle is being blown too loudly, too soon. Take, for instance, the Enterprise Collaboration Panel at last year’s Office 2.0 Conference. Most of the discussion was really about communication rather than collaboration, with only a hint that beyond forming a social network (“putting the water cooler inside the computer”) there was still a lack of software that actually helped groups of people get the work done. What’s missing from the discussion is any formulation of what the process of collaboration entails; there’s no model from which collaborative applications could arise. If we can figure out a model then we in the UX community should be able to make a significant contribution to it. http://tc.eserver.org/34126.html http://tc.eserver.org/34126.html What started out as something people did via e-mail and bookmark-sharing services like Delicious, is now moving to Facebook, Twitter, and other social broadcasting services. It is just so much more efficient to share a link once with all your friends and followers than to send it to each one individually. http://tc.eserver.org/34098.html http://tc.eserver.org/34098.html We’ve all been part of communities since kindergarten, or earlier. Churches, schools, sports teams, and neighborhoods all satisfy basic human desires to interact with others and work toward a common goal. And yet, when these communities are online and we start to think of them as “social sites,” these concepts can suddenly feel foreign. My work in communities (primarily as the editor of community-created magazine JPG) has shown me that different sets of people are usually motivated in similar ways. Most people have an innate need to belong and feel like part of something, and successfully contributing to that something can really reinforce self-worth. Whether you’re at a company such as Yelp working with product reviews, or Threadless working with t-shirts, or in a church group working on an annual recipe book, try some of these methods to nurture great content. http://tc.eserver.org/34101.html http://tc.eserver.org/34101.html Humans can behave in surprising ways when you bring them together. In an information space, a human’s needs are simple and his behavior straightforward. Find. Read. Save. But once you get a bunch of humans together, communicating and collaborating, you can observe both the madness and the wisdom of crowds. http://tc.eserver.org/34051.html http://tc.eserver.org/34051.html Since you only have 140 characters to get your message across, you’re forced to dust off your dictionary and thesaurus and find new words to use—Words that are shorter, words that are more descriptive, and words that get the job done in 140 characters or less. http://tc.eserver.org/34052.html http://tc.eserver.org/34052.html Twitter is changing the way information spreads online. Links that would have been blogged a couple of years ago are now more often shared via the micro-blogging service instead, which fundamentally changes strategy when trying to get content to spread. http://tc.eserver.org/34043.html http://tc.eserver.org/34043.html I presented a session remotely at the Presentation Camp at Stanford University, California. My session was on “How to engage your audience with Twitter” and I tried to do exactly that during my presentation. Here’s what I learnt from my experience. http://tc.eserver.org/34018.html http://tc.eserver.org/34018.html Web 2.0 and social media mean that for teachers a declining part of their job involves telling. An increasing part is listening to the class and facilitating them in having conversations. Teachers should help moderate these conversations and draw new learnings from them. They need to say less of: ‘let’s open up a book.’ and more of: ‘let’s open up a conversation.’. The traditional manager is taught to command and control. Web 2.0 challenges that model. http://tc.eserver.org/33998.html http://tc.eserver.org/33998.html Social network sites (SNSs) are increasingly attracting the attention of academic and industry researchers intrigued by their affordances and reach. This special theme section of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication brings together scholarship on these emergent phenomena. In this introductory article, we describe features of SNSs and propose a comprehensive definition. We then present one perspective on the history of such sites, discussing key changes and developments. After briefly summarizing existing scholarship concerning SNSs, we discuss the articles in this special section and conclude with considerations for future research. http://tc.eserver.org/33999.html http://tc.eserver.org/33999.html In this article I’ll showcase some of the current top social news sites, will identify trends and patterns in their designs and suggest some best practices to follow when designing such sites. Let’s begin by looking at four popular social news sites and see how their designs compare. http://tc.eserver.org/33948.html http://tc.eserver.org/33948.html For users, Web 2.0 was all about reorganizing web-based practices around Friends. For many users, direct communication tools like email and IM were used to communicate with one's closest and dearest while online communities were tools for connecting with strangers around shared interests. Web 2.0 reworked all of that by allowing users to connect in new ways. While many of the tools may have been designed to help people find others, what Web 2.0 showed was that people really wanted a way to connect with those that they already knew in new ways. Even tools like MySpace and Facebook which are typically labeled social networkING sites were never really about networking for most users. They were about socializing inside of pre-existing networks. http://tc.eserver.org/33930.html http://tc.eserver.org/33930.html Forget about rivalries with MySpace and LinkedIn. Facebook's real competition is coming from upstart microblogging site Twitter. http://tc.eserver.org/33889.html http://tc.eserver.org/33889.html Social networking once meant going to a social function such as a cocktail party, conference, or business luncheon. Today, much social networking is achieved through Web sites such as MySpace, FaceBook, or LinkedIn. Many individuals use these sites to meet new friends, make connections, and upload personal infor- mation. On social networking Web sites (SNWs) that focus more on business connections, such as LinkedIn, individuals upload job qualifi- cations and application information. These SNWs are now being used as reference checks by human resource (HR) personnel. For this reason, SNW users, particularly university students and other soon-to-be job applicants, should ask the following questions: Am I loading information that I want the world to see? Is this really a picture that shows me in the best light? What impression would another person have of me if he or she went through my site? Although SNWs are a great way to be connected with friends, family, and friends-to-be, they can present problems when potential employers begin to search through them for information concerning job applicants. Many potential employees would be mortified to learn that employers could potentially read the personal information posted on MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, or other SNWs. Searches on SNWs allow employers to look into what is done 'after hours,' socially or privately, by the applicant. A résumé may be just a snapshot of a job applicant, while other personal information may be found online. Many job applicants have learned the hard way that what they post may come back to haunt them (Rodriquez, 2006). Human Resources and SNWs Many companies that recruit on college campuses look up applicants on MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other SNWs. What they find on these sites presents a dilemma for the recruiters. Students post comments that they may think are private but can be read by many. These posts can be provocative comments on any subject from drinking to recreational drugs to sexual exploits. Although they may seem innocent enough to the students who have posted them, college recruiters or graduate admission officers may look at these postings as immature and unprofessional. Recruiters are warning universities' career resource centers that they are looking at SNWs and that it would be best to work with students about how they are presenting themselves on these sites. The lifestyle the students are presenting online may not be what corporate recruiters or graduate school admission officers want in potential applicants. http://tc.eserver.org/33879.html http://tc.eserver.org/33879.html Within hours of Tweeting “Who do I have to schmooze to get a job in this joint?” Chelsea Winkel received three direct messages, a much better (and as it would turn out, more substantial) turnout than anything else she’d tried so far. The key to making Twitter work for you is being proactive. http://tc.eserver.org/33881.html http://tc.eserver.org/33881.html Not embracing conversational marketing and letting go of some control is reckless because it puts a barrier up between you and your customers, I reminded some executive clients. Change that makes a big difference, however, requires just a small bit of courage. http://tc.eserver.org/33751.html http://tc.eserver.org/33751.html There’s nothing quite like Twitter. It’s a Web site where you can broadcast very short messages — 140 characters, max — to anyone who’s signed up to receive them. It’s like a cross between a blog and a chat room. http://tc.eserver.org/33717.html http://tc.eserver.org/33717.html Twitter is popular not just because it allows journalists to crowdsource with thousands of people or because it's a fun way of amassing followers and inflating egos. It also gives reporters a chance to create a new system of reporting. In the past, journalists were confined to their words and research methods, all dictated by traditional routines. Now they can create new strategies, use different tools, brand themselves differently, and propose new ideas. Twitter has given them hope and direction to do this because it has given them a public forum in which to loudly speak their ideas. http://tc.eserver.org/33711.html http://tc.eserver.org/33711.html Yesterday a Twitter post (a tweet) by Mashable’s Pete Cashmore became so popular that traffic from Twitter crashed a blog. This sounds very similar to a common social media phenomenon originally known as the Slashdot effect (and later also the Digg effect), where a post on a popular social media site pushes more traffic than the target site can handle. An interesting thing here is the mechanics of Twitter, which is fundamentally different from Digg and Slashdot. It’s not a social news site, with a front page that all visitors go to. http://tc.eserver.org/33692.html http://tc.eserver.org/33692.html You've probably heard how much the micro-blogging service Twitter can help your business, or that being on social networking site Facebook can boost your company's profile. But what you might not have considered is the potential danger in over-relying on these startups that could go out of business, get bought out, or close your account if you aren't familiar with their Terms of Service. http://tc.eserver.org/33688.html http://tc.eserver.org/33688.html Much documentation and training is delivered in one direction—the writer provides content, and the user consumes it. Perhaps this is one reason that technical communicators are looking for ways to create a conversation. It’s easier to address user problems when you can ask follow-up questions and get details. In a one-way delivery, you have to hope that what you provide will cover what’s needed. In a conversation, you can constantly get more information and react accordingly. Still, in an instant message, chat, or forum conversation, it can be hard to be clear. http://tc.eserver.org/33677.html http://tc.eserver.org/33677.html Twitter and other social media give customers the potential to create their own models of customer service, their own expectations of how help and support might be provided. They will find gaps through which to force departments to talk to each other, erode lines between companies, and perhaps ultimately for companies unwilling to change they may bypass them altogether and look to each other for help through applications such as Twitter. http://tc.eserver.org/33641.html http://tc.eserver.org/33641.html "Convergence Technical Communication" (CTC) is technical communication that provides information in several forms, including Web 2.0 delivery mechanisms, to improve the user experience. Most of the content is generated by technical communicators; a portion by users. Web 2.0 makes it possible to create additional deliverables that enhance the user experience several different ways. First, it engages the different learning styles of our audience. Second, it improves user satisfaction with your product by creating communities of practice that allow users to participate in the conversation. Finally, any feedback and suggestions obtained can be used to improve the core deliverable set. http://tc.eserver.org/33643.html http://tc.eserver.org/33643.html With the explosion of Web 2.0 come two new kinds of community events: BarCamps and BookSprints. Gentle and Swisher share their experiences with these unconferences. http://tc.eserver.org/33646.html http://tc.eserver.org/33646.html How does Web 2.0 fit into the world of public health? STC Fellow, Dr. Thomas Barker discusses the values of social networking in regards to largescale public disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina and the SARS outbreak. http://tc.eserver.org/33649.html http://tc.eserver.org/33649.html Have you been waiting for the right time to switch to XML publishing? O’Keefe illustrates that with the advent of Web 2.0, the time is now. http://tc.eserver.org/33651.html http://tc.eserver.org/33651.html Running a web community can be fun and rewarding, but you’re always reliant on the good faith of your members. So what happens when rogue elements threaten to disrupt, even destroy, the foundations of your virtual society? Derek Powazek has some suggestions